A King’s Ransom
Some came to Sotheby’s on Monday to admire the fine silverware and porcelain. Others wanted to peek into the intimate world of a couple at the center of this century’s ultimate royal scandal.
But among those who studied the cherished possessions that once decorated the French mansion of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, few intended to buy anything.
“I don’t think we can afford it,” said Annette Crossley, referring to herself and her mother-in-law, Lucille Crossley, as they stood before the Spanish earthenware dinner plates carefully laid on the Windsors’ mahogany dining table.
The meeting of Beverly Hills glitz and British royal memorabilia came on the opening morning of a four-day exhibit to publicize the auction of the collection Sept. 11 to 19 in New York City. The first night of the auction will be televised at Sotheby’s in Beverly Hills.
In all, Sotheby’s will sell 3,200 lots of household possessions and keepsakes that belonged to Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson, the American divorcee for whom he gave up an empire. Furniture, clothes, love letters and ornaments to be auctioned are currently on display in in London, New York and Buenos Aires.
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In a freakish twist, the collection’s owner is Mohamed al Fayed, father of the man now rumored in British tabloids to be romantically involved with Princess Diana, Dodi al Fayed.
Sotheby’s display, though, is from a different age, when a royal affair remained beyond the pages of Fleet Street’s newspapers until a constitutional crisis was imminent.
In December 1936, the 42-year-old Edward Windsor shocked Britons by abdicating the throne less than a year after becoming king.
Edward’s proposal of marriage to the recently divorced Wallis Warfield Simpson outraged the Church of England and split the British government, the royal household and the British Empire.
Although he had prepared for kingship his whole life, Edward found it impossible, he told Britons during a radio address, “to discharge my duties as king as I would wish to do, without the help and support of the woman I love.”
More than 60 years later, and a continent away, the story still captivates.
“It’s very poignant,” said Annette Crossley of Lancaster, who read a chapter of Edward’s autobiography, “A King’s Story,” before she came. “It’s a classic. It’s a kind of Romeo and Juliet story.”
“It’s the only time in history that a king of England or anywhere has given up the throne for love,” said Joe Friedman, the Sotheby’s antique specialist in charge of the sale.
A handful of self-professed Anglophiles and fans of royalty negotiated television cables and camera operators Monday morning to view the trappings of that love.
In one glass case, a love note--”From Her to Him: the gardenia”--stood next to the fading dried flower that the couple had kept since Simpson picked it for Edward a year before he abdicated. The anticipated price? $1,000 to $1,500.
For the unsentimental, there was the chance to see and feel the tails, the gloves, the hats and dresses that made the duke and duchess the world’s most fashionable couple of the 1930s and ‘40s.
“I thought he was really handsome, very dashing,” said Lucille Crossley of Tarzana, who was 9 when Edward VIII gave up the throne. “He was a kind of playboy.”
“He was brilliant at combining patterns and colors,” Friedman said as he pointed to a catalog photograph of a double-breasted green tartan evening suit, expected to sell for $800 to $1,000.
The reaction to the exhibit in the United States has been more positive than in England, where the couple have never truly been forgiven for Edward’s abandonment of the throne, Friedman said.
In Britain, Simpson was the “other woman,” an ambitious American who seduced a king. But the couple’s letters and diary entries tell a different story, showing Simpson pleading with Edward not to resign his throne, Friedman said.
The parallels with today’s royal scandals are striking.
“I still stand up for Diana,” Lucille Crossley said. “My husband can’t say anything without me saying, ‘Oh! The poor thing.’ ”
“It’s a great story. It’s one of the best,” Susan Friedman, no relation to Joe Friedman, said of the duke and duchess as she examined enlarged pictures of the couple that line the exhibition room.
The royal family was different during the 1930s, she added.
“They had a mystique, pageantry, a history. And they were protected at that time [from the press].”
